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| Are love interests just roadblocks | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 19 2015, 04:42 AM (199 Views) | |
| thewiseladysaid | Feb 19 2015, 04:42 AM Post #1 |
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Is it just me, or are the love interests of the Shameless characters (besides Mickey) just being treated as good or bad decisions instead of characters? Karen, Mandy, Amanda, Jimmy and Gus in my opinion the longer they are on the show eventually become just a good or bad decision of a perspective Gallagher? Am I the only one who feels this way? |
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| Jessica | Feb 20 2015, 03:18 PM Post #2 |
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aka soulisthirsty
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I think that's an interesting question, and in a lot of ways those characters were reduced to plot devices for whichever Gallagher they happened to be involved with. Mandy and Karen were both introduced as individual characters with their own stories, but you can't deny that once they were no longer involved with Lip, the writers made them less and less relevant to the story until finally just writing them off. And sure, technically their storylines were resolved, but with the bare minimum of screentime they could afford. Karen for example initially left by her own terms and for her own reasons - she gave her mother a choice, her mother chose the baby and Karen couldn't deal with that so she left. When the writers brought her back, although she eventually tried mending her relationship with her mother as well, I feel like she was mostly used as a plot device for Lip's story because he still had feelings for her. He had both Mandy and Karen to choose between, and Mandy was being portrayed as the "good" choice and Karen the "bad" choice, the choice Lip kept making that never worked out. And he did finally make that choice, just in time for Mandy to do irreparable damage to their relationship by running over Karen and ruining her life. Mandy was used to get Lip into college. Amanda was used to help Lip get his shit together so he could actually pass the first year, and now possibly she may be used to get him an internship if they stay together long enough for that to happen. With Fiona, Jimmy was always somewhat of a questionable choice. Granted, he was a questionable choice that genuinely loved her and came to love her family pretty quickly, but still. He was introduced as a car thief with a second life, he left the show and came back married because of the trouble he'd gotten into with Estefania's dad, he stayed with Fiona and decided to try and balance both lives but the dangerous one came back to bite him in the ass because Estefania's dad found out. Now, he's still up to his ears in just as much trouble and excitement as always, and it seems like Fiona will finally be learning her lesson: as much as Jimmy may want to, he can't keep the two worlds separate, so until he chooses, she can't be with him. And Jimmy, as we learned in season 3, isn't cut out for working multiple shitty jobs for next to no pay. He wanted to, and he tried to for a while, but I don't know if right now he could go back to doing the same. He's been back for months without contacting Fiona, and has clearly still been doing jobs with Angela. The only reason he got in touch now is because he was afraid she was actually moving on. In the promo, he's asking her to go WITH him to Dubai, so he's back to that season one "let me show you the world" guy who did illegal jobs for fast money. So now he goes from a questionable choice to a bad one, because it's that life which has made him unreliable in the past, something Fiona isn't willing to go through again despite whatever feelings she still has for him. And with Fiona especially, her relationships have always had that bad choice or good choice element. In the beginning, it was Tony and Steve, with Tony being the all-around "good guy" next door that she had grown up with, that kind of looked out for her family from afar, who had a proper job. Fiona chose Steve, because Tony was boring to her and with Steve she had passion and excitement. Then it was Mike and Jimmy, Jimmy who at the time was dealing with the consequences of neglecting his marriage with Estefania and Mike who was this really well-off guy Fiona worked for and liked. She chose him for a while, but per her own admission she unconsciously sabotaged their relationship by sleeping with Robbie and taking drugs to cope with Mike and his family finding out. She tried making what she thought was a good decision by making a move on Sean, but he made it clear that for him, despite the attraction he felt, she was definitely a bad choice he couldn't afford to make. So she moves on to bad choice #1, the band member with a girlfriend, and when he presents her an alternative she just... takes it. And Gus is nice to her and apparently interested in her, but I don't know yet if I'd classify him as a good choice. He makes Fiona feel better, or "sane" as she put it, but they're still two people living individual lives. Fiona goes to handle her family issues on her own, giving the bare minimum of details to Gus. Spoiler: click to toggle But when you look at a couple like Ian and Mickey, there really is no one else for them. Sure, Ian hooked up with a few different guys, and Mickey supposedly slept with guys in juvie and slept with Angie Zago, but as far as feelings and emotional attachment goes, they've always gone back to each other and whereas other couples got worse with each reunion, Ian and Mickey's relationship got stronger and gained momentum until finally reaching the point they're at now. I do think they both went through periods where their relationship seemed like a bad decision, but it was one they thought was worth making to be together and they worked through it and developed as characters until it wasn't anymore. As far as the show treating the other love interests as just good or bad decisions until they've served their purpose with whatever Gallagher they're involved with, I think the difference between Mickey and Karen or Mandy, for example, is that Mickey was a love interest they decided to develop and give a story of his own. Mandy and Karen already had a story and were introduced as individual characters before they were reduced to revolving around Lip. I mean, Karen had a great storyline in season one with dealing with her mother's agoraphobia and dealing with her father's judgement. Mandy was a very insecure girl despite how she tried to come across, she became Ian's best friend and you were kind of opened up to her home life throughout the first two seasons - the realization of how different the Milkovich household was in comparison to the Gallagher's, the fact that her father raped her, her pregnancy, etc. But the more both girl's stories began to revolve around Lip, the more in danger their characters became of being written off. I do think it's kind of realistic, because even in real life relationships sometimes work that way. Sometimes they're just a learning experience or sometimes they just set you on a different course in life. But it is sad when you see so much potential in some of these characters and you want to learn more about them or see them grow into stories of their own but the writers just have no interest in that because that's not what they were there for. And it's not so bad with characters like Amanda or Gus who started off as plot devices anyway, but when it happens to characters you grew attached to long before that became their destination, it can be frustrating. |
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7:22 PM Jul 11